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Stephen Schwarzman, the famously detail-oriented CEO and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, has placed a big bet on education -- and America's relationship with China. In April, he announced a $100 million gift to create a scholarship fund, dedicated a building that will house a new educational program at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, and pledged to raise a further $200 million to help fund the scholarship's endowment.

Our meeting at his Park Avenue office, set up to discuss his big-bore philanthropy, was coincidentally scheduled just before a committee meeting to select the floor tiles of Schwarzman College, the Beijing building to be named in his honor. This was, we learned, the third time the private-equity mogul had attended a meeting to determine the building's tile selection.

This news gave us pause, and he grinned at our suggestion that his approach was a tad obsessive. It has never been his philosophy to have a vision and delegate it to others, he says. "You've got to stay really close and set it off in the right direction," he adds. "I'm a real micromanager, as well as a strategist, so when you start new enterprises you have to have the right touch."

Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone Group, is building a $300 million scholarship program in China. Modeled after the Rhodes program, it aims to produce 10,000 scholars with a deep understanding of China.
Todd Heisler/Redux

Schwarzman, 66, is already halfway to fulfilling his $200 million fund-raising goal, backed by gifts from the likes of Caterpillar, Boeing, and BP. The endowment he raises will cover all of the expenses for 200 students to attend Tsinghua University each year, drawn mostly from the U.S. and China, but also from other countries across the globe. Modeled after the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, the program will cherry-pick top students to become -- you guessed it -- Schwarzman Scholars.

The students picked for the program will complete a rigorous one-year master's course at Tsinghua, with a core curriculum in economics, international relations, corporate governance, and Chinese history and culture. The program is expected to start in the fall of 2016.

Schwarzman tells us the scholarship program was partially motivated by his middle-class upbringing. His father owned a modest dry-goods store outside of Philadelphia. Through hard work and determination, Schwarzman parlayed his suburban education into stints at Yale and Harvard, becoming in the process a big believer in helping less-fortunate folk get a world-class education. Past philanthropic gifts include sponsoring 200 lower-income inner-city children per year to attend Catholic schools in New York City, and a $100 million donation to the New York Public Library.

Tsinghua University has an interesting history and is a smart choice for such a partnership. After Western powers quashed the uprising of Chinese nationalists in 1901, sizable indemnities were imposed on the Chinese government.

To reduce the burden of these crushing payments, then-President Theodore Roosevelt halved China's payments to the U.S. The Chinese government received a portion of the settlement to create a scholarship program, with the purpose of grooming Chinese students for study in the U.S. In 1911, Tsinghua opened its doors as a prep school to carry out that mission.

The university has since become one of the Chinese state's top schools. Schwarzman's personal relationship with Tsinghua began in 2007, following Blackstone's initial public offering. The Chinese government, through its sovereign-wealth fund, originally bought a 10% stake in the private-equity firm. That IPO made Schwarzman a very rich man, of course; his net worth is currently estimated at $6.5 billion. So perhaps it's no surprise that he was subsequently asked to sit on the board of Tsinghua's School of Economics & Management. Eventually, Tsinghua's administrators began to consult with him about setting up a program for international students. "It was a very unformed and generic request that I didn't respond to for at least two years," he said.

As the U.S. floundered in the financial crisis, and China proved somewhat resilient, Schwarzman began to re-evaluate the university's suggestion. "What I was interested in was trying to address the issue of increasing tension between China and the rest of the world," he told us. As China continues to grow at a pace two to three times that of the developed world, and the jobless rate remains high in advanced economies, he became concerned that friction could escalate over time. "If that anger and frustration is directed at China, you could set up a very unfortunate feedback loop that creates trade problems, economic problems, and even military problems."

China will likely be the world's largest economy in 20 years. Schwarzman sees the scholarship as an opportunity to create a Rhodes-type program updated for the 21st century's shift in power. "Rhodes picks from a limited number of countries, which are basically former colonies of the British Empire," he explains. "It made complete sense when the program was established in 1903, but roughly 100 years later, we are looking at a different world and addressing a different issue."

All true. But was there also, perhaps, a buried academic wound behind his largess? Schwarzman confirms he applied for both Rhodes and Cambridge scholarships and was denied both. "It is really funny how life works," he says. "I thought it was an important experience I would have liked to have." But he doesn't seem to lament the missed opportunity, and says simply, "I had other experiences in life, which is what happens when one door is shut: You open some other door."

The Schwarzman Scholarship's aim is to create an international network of "thought leaders" -- 10,000 alumni in 50 years -- who are culturally and philosophically steeped in China.

"This group of 10,000 people could be a very formidable group with their international understanding, particularly of China," Schwarzman says, adding, "They can provide feedback to China when China is doing something that annoys the rest of the world and vice versa." The ultimate goal, he says, "is to evaluate how these thought leaders materially influence other people, not just on China, but [through] their views on globalization."

In short, Schwarzman is hoping the program will produce an army of globalists who, when things get tense among nations, will be able to "see things in a balanced and reasoned way." The scholarship is divided up geographically, like a balanced investment portfolio. The U.S. and China will comprise 45% and 20% of the students, respectively; the remaining 35% will be plucked from developed economies like Europe and Japan, and the emerging powers of South Korea and India.

We couldn't resist a final, impertinent question. The Chinese government invested in Blackstone and now Schwarzman is returning the favor by "investing" in Chinese education. Could this exercise be a backroom effort to curry additional favor with the Chinese government and open more Middle Kingdom doors for Blackstone?

The question is fair, he says, before swiftly and elegantly taking off our head. Blackstone, he says calmly, "has virtually all the doors open" it needs, "and I've got easier ways to open doors than by putting $100 million on the table."

The next milestone comes later this year, the scheduled groundbreaking for Schwarzman College. Before he abruptly left our meeting, Schwarzman returned to his obsessive micromanagement style. "When things are unformed, you've got to set them off in a good direction and keep defining excellence and quality in everything that you do. After you've said your piece, it's easier to personally pull back and let other people take over."

With that, he ran off to his third meeting to choose the tiles, furnishings, and finishes that will adorn Schwarzman College.